Jeanne D'Arc: her life and death eBook

no one seems to know where, either at St. Denis or
at some intermediate spot, possibly to form a reserve
force which could be brought up when wanted.
The best informed historian only knows that Charles
was not with the active force. But Alencon was
at the head of the troops, along with many other names
well known to us, La Hire, and young Guy de Laval,
and Xantrailles, all mighty men of valour and the
devoted friends of Jeanne. There is a something,
a mist, an incertitude in the beginning of the assault
which was unlike the previous achievements of Jeanne,
a certain want of precaution or knowledge of the difficulties
which does not reflect honour upon the generals with
her. Absolutely new to warfare as she was before
Orleans she had ridden out at once on her arrival
there to inspect the fortifications of the besiegers.
But probably the continual skirmishing of which we
are told made this impossible here, so that, though
the Maid studied the situation of the town in order
to choose the best point for attack, it was only when
already engaged that the army discovered a double
ditch round the walls, the inner one of which was
full of water. By sheer impetuosity the French
took the gate of St. Honore and its “boulevard”
or tower, driving its defenders back into the city:
but their further progress was arrested by that discovery.
It was on this occasion that Jeanne is supposed to
have seized from a Burgundian in the melee, a sword,
of which she boasted afterwards that it was a good
sword capable of good blows, though we have no certain
record that in all her battles she ever gave one blow,
or shed blood at all.

It would seem to have been only after the taking of
this gate that the discovery was made as to the two
deep ditches, one dry, the other filled with water.
Jeanne, whose place had always been with her standard
at the immediate foot of the wall, from whence to
direct and cheer on her soldiers, pressed forward
to this point of peril, descending into the first
fosse, and climbing up again on the second, the dos
d’ane, which separated them, where she stood
in the midst of a rain of arrows, fully exposed to
all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the
ramparts above, testing with her lance the depth of
the water. We seem in the story to see her all
alone or with her standard-bearer only by her side
making this investigation; but that of course is only
a pictorial suggestion, though it might for a moment
be the fact. She remained there, however, from
two in the afternoon till night, when she was forced
away. The struggle must have raged around while
she stood on the dark edge of the ditch probing the
muddy water to see where it could best be crossed,
shouting directions to her men in that voice assez
femme, which penetrated the noise of battle, and
summoning the active and desperate enemy overhead.
“Renty! Renty!” she cried as
she had done at Orleans—­“surrender
to the King of France!”